Lightning Appreciation Week
by cougarlips
Summary: Works for Lightning Appreciation Week, details found at tumblr account "lightningweek". 1) favorite relationship, Hope; 2) favorite outfit, Etro's armor; 3) favorite game appearance, XIII; 4) favorite scene, LR ending; 5) emotions, relief; 6) favorite physical feature, facial features; 7) free day, Lumina.
1. Favorite Relationship: Hope Estheim

Hope is nimble and quick on his feet. His fingers shoot spells faster than anyone's, even Vanille's, who became a l'Cie long before any of us were even born. His protective spells feel like an embrace, warm and comforting - different from Sazh's spells, somehow, which always have a hint of urgency. When he heals, a calm settles over us and the world fades away. Every stress melts from our skin and we're alone, even when surrounded by hoards of enemies.

After Palumpolum he's different. He seems wiser, ready to take on everything with a clear head and open heart. His spells come easier to him and he's faster, stronger, _kinder_. He still whimpers in his sleep, but now his eyes twinkle and his face isn't warped with anger. Vanille notices the change, too, and Snow and I exchange glances when he volunteers to scout ahead.

In Valhalla, it's Serah I miss the most, but immediately behind her is Hope. I watch him from time to time, watching him grow older and wiser as I stay the same - never growing, ever twenty-one in body. As the years pass before him, I feel in my stomach a dropping sadness that I can't spend time with him. When his twenty-second birthday passes, I feel tears on my face I didn't know I had shed. I still think of Hope as a scared, directionless fourteen year old in the back of my mind, but now he's older than I am. Twenty-three passes, then twenty-four, twenty-five, and when he's twenty-six he and Serah and Noel are reunited but for a moment, and then the unthinkable happens.

I sleep for a long time on Etro's throne with crystallized tears permanently etched onto my hardened skin. I exist, but only in essence. The loss of Serah still leaves an ache in my chest, almost as though my heart is physically torn into pieces with every passing moment.

It's when the thought of Hope enters my mind that I am the most _there_. At times I can actually see him and I can almost reach out; even though I'm not physically there, he can sense something and sometimes, sometimes - he calls out for me.

I like to talk to him while he's working away. I peek over his shoulder and read over his notes but I shake my head at the absurdity of his studies. He begins searching for me, but as the repercussions of losing Etro make themselves known, he's forced to push my case to the side. He studies for a way to maintain the new cocoon, but it's caving under the stress of supporting life, and the Chaos is eating it into oblivion.

I don't know how much time truly passes, but slowly Hope begins showing signs of stress. It's true that no one can age, but his eyes sink deeper into his skull, and his skin takes on a deathly pallor. It's when he starts staring at me - no, _through_ me, I have to correct myself - that I begin to worry, truly. I follow him around almost constantly, and he's withdrawing himself from Snow and Noel. He talks to me more, now, and his words worry me. He writes in his notes - his old notes, his _original_ notes about me - about what he calls me: a rose-haired phantom.

He rests more now. He still lives on the man-made cocoon, despite its falling apart. A lumpy bed sits in the corner of his office, and often-times he doesn't even move to his desk to sift through dozens of texts. And when he finally, simply, disappears, it almost feels like a relief to not have to watch him regress.

Bright light surrounds and encompasses me. I feel a warm glow settling on my skin, but I'm missing something - I'm missing a warmth in my chest that should be there, the warmth of joy that I am no longer a crystalline statue, no longer a slave to my surroundings.

My eyes are shut as I feel around for what is missing inside me, but I can't place it, and now I'm wondering if maybe I'm only imaging that I'm missing something.

And then I hear it, the wheezy voice of a fourteen year old who had to grow up too fast: "Welcome home, Light."

And I know, without a doubt, that something is wrong.

* * *

a/n: Lightning Appreciation Week, if anyone is curious, is something that tumblr users Neoshadow and Yunalesca have had planned for ages in response to the recent bouts of hate Lightning and Final Fantasy XIII have been getting from the Louis Vuitton ads. The days, and their prompts, are: Day 1: Favorite relationship(s); Day 2: Favorite outfit; Day 3: Favorite game appearance; Day 4: Favorite scene; Day 5: Emotions; Day 6: Favorite physical feature; Day 7: Free day/why you love Lightning. If you're interested, it's never too late to start, and you can answer in any form you're most comfortable in (fanfiction, fanart, edits, gifsets, doodles, just general answering in text-post format).


	2. Favorite Outfit: Etro's Armor

The Chaos pooled around me, pulling me into the chasm that ripped from the ground below. Serah and Snow embraced one another; Hope laughed with Sazh over Dajh's reaction to the green earth, so different from Cocoon's artificial environment. I clawed at the dirt, screaming, desperately trying to grab the attention of any of them, but I was invisible to them. The earth swallowed me whole, and I was left gasping for air in the pitch-black darkness that threatened to strangle me with its grip.

My feet hit the ground and I collapsed, too oxygen-starved to fully care about where I fell. I took several deep, shaking breaths as I began ripping my vest off, tearing my turtle-neck away from my throat, as if doing that would open up my airways, but it was all in vain: the air was wrong wherever it was that I landed. It was too still, too stagnant, too damp to be anything natural. Even Cocoon had fresher air inside its artificial shell than this wide landscape did. I glanced around, forcing my breath to even out as I clutched my top in one hand. My other hand already gripped my gunblade, open and ready for battle while I gathered my wits.

Inside my ear I heard a murmur, almost as if there were a whisper in a breeze, except still there was no movement in the air. The voice belonged to a girl: perhaps no older than Serah, but no face came to mind, and only a vague memory stirred inside my head. Again, it breathed into my head, and I could stand it no longer; gathering my clothes, I quickly resituated myself and padded my way towards the direction the voice urged me in.

The soft soles of my boots made no sound as I found my way towards a decimated palace. I can tell by looking at it that it once was great, even if it now stood missing several walls, towers, and ground floors. I made my way slowly inside the ruins, both hands carefully situated on the hilt of my weapon. Exhaustion threatened to seep into my bones, but the voice urged me forward, pleading with me. Come, help, it begged, and the Serah-like quality to it forced me onward.

Inside the main hall I saw it: a crystalline throne. On it sat the figure of a girl, perhaps fifteen in age. Her pale eyes rested and her breathing labored, her lavender hair falling out of the headdress she wore and creating a curtain around her petite face.

I stared at the girl, a name immediately appearing into my mind. The Goddess Etro, who now I remembered as the one who whispered into my mind as I awake from my own Crystal Stasis, sagged in her throne.

 _I am weak_ , she whispered into me. _I need rest_.

Dropping to one knee, I looked down at the Goddess's feet. "What would you have me do?" I asked her, and looking up, her mouth curled into a delicate smile.

 _There is a man_ , she told me. _His name is Caius Ballad. He will soon embark on a mission to kill me, but I am too weak to fend him off._

 _Claire Farron_ , she breathed, _I will soon fall into a heavy sleep, in which I will be entirely vulnerable to Caius Ballad. I ask that join me here, in Valhalla. I ask that you become my Champion._

I nodded immediately. "Of course, your Grace," I told her, and she tilted her head up to look at me.

A feather-light weight came over me at her gesture. I felt my feet lift off the ground of their own accord. My Guardian Corp-issued leather boots disappeared first, dissolving into nothingness, leaving behind only my bare feet. My pack of items and skirt were next to go, simply fading away, followed by my vest and turtleneck. Along with my gloves, bracelets, and my Guardian Corp identifier, my undergarments and jewelry peeled off of my body. My gunblade and harness, too, were stripped from me.

Suspended in midair, I faced the Goddess entirely exposed. She nodded once, and suddenly my feet were engulfed in downy-soft feathers that trailed up my body, leaving steel and bronze armor in its place. A carbon fiber bodice fashioned itself around my center, a steel chest plate secured in place by shoulder braces and hooking onto the plates around my hips. Underneath the hip plating the feathers finally situated, weaving into something not unlike my GC cape. My gunblade, rewelded, latched onto my backplate, and on my right arm rested a shield.

Slowly I was placed back onto my feet, and for a few seconds I could only reacclimate to my new armor: heavier than my leather and cloth uniform that I'd lived in for weeks on the run, but lighter than I would have thought pure steel to be. Fabric fashioned out of dyed leather and braces out of carbon fiber situated themselves onto my skin, stretched to cover all exposed skin and traveled up my neck, leaving only the fainting feeling of even being there. A helmet appeared in my free hand, shining and glimmering in the ethereal glow of the Goddess.

A tear slid down my cheek unknowingly, and I started at the feeling of fingers caressing my skin. The Goddess stood before me, easily a head shorter than me, and she smiled peacefully. _Here you can see all of time_ , she said. Motioning toward a wide hole in the center of the hall, she told me, _In this pool, you need only think of them and their current whereabouts will be revealed to you_.

 _I beg of you to keep me safe, Claire Farron, for if Caius Ballad truly kills me, there will be no one else to ferry the souls of the damned._

I nodded towards the Goddess, kneeling once more before her, and she rested a light hand on my head. "Thank you, Claire Farron," she whispered.


	3. Favorite Game Appearance: XIII

Lightning stared at her ceiling, thinking.

This used to be her parents' room. She could remember how the bed was positioned to face the window and how the sun would rise and wake her parents up every morning. She remembered how the dresser was positioned in the corner of the room, just to the left of the window, and to the right was a wardrobe, passed down from generation to generation inside her family. The walls had been painted a light gray (her mother's idea, she knew, for the woman was a lover of simplicity) but framed photographs littered every surface in the room, from the dressers to the bedside tables to the walls - hand drawn masterpieces courtesy of four- and one-year old Claire and Serah Farron in an array of colors and shapes that made no sense whatsoever and yet their parents adored every square inch.

Serah was too young to remember their dad, but Claire could remember waking up before the sunrise every morning and deciding it was a good idea to wake her parents up too. They never complained: her father would grunt and groan before turning a bleary eye to his daughter, a grin betraying his otherwise sleepy features. Her mother would rise and check on Serah, even though Claire would repeatedly tell her that she already did that, and that Serah was fast asleep in her crib. Serah was only a year old when their father died.

Their mother tried, Lightning knew. More than once a neighbor was left to keep an eye on the girls while their mother worked… and worked, and worked. Once Claire turned fourteen, it was her job to keep an eye on herself and eleven year old Serah. In the end it was sheer exhaustion that killed their mother when Claire was freshly seventeen.

Serah may not have been able to remember their father, but she was old enough to remember their mother. In a simple dress and shiny shoes, Serah tied up her hair and wore a veil over her face to mask the puffiness of her cheeks and redness of her eyes. Claire wore slacks and a button-up to the funeral, and she wore slacks and a button-up to the interview immediately after, her hair loosely draped over her shoulder and skin pale.

It was under a special circumstance that Claire successfully joined the Guardian Corp at only age seventeen, but she did. She felt like her mother, spending more time at work than at home, but she needed to prove she was capable of taking care of fourteen year old Serah Farron. She could not lose her sister as well as her parents. At work, she made no pretense of trying to make friends. She did not smile when she locked eyes with a coworker, did not wave if she saw someone she recognized in public. Claire arrived at dawn, diligently performed her assigned tasks, and left at dusk, speaking to no one save her higher authorities. Behind her back, she heard whispers, but she paid no mind to them.

She was called a variety of words by men and women alike who disliked her impersonal personality. Rain or shine, she did her job and left. Finally, a nickname stuck: during a particularly nasty thunderstorm, Claire did not even blink as lightning struck only yards away from the corner she patrolled. Lightning, they started calling her, as unemotional and striking as Claire Farron.

This nickname became her new name at work, and she found it easily differentiated her work life from her personal life. Serah soon became the only person to know her as Claire, and even so, as time passed and her sister climbed through the ranks, Serah began referring to her sister by this alter ego's moniker. Claire Farron, little girl with bright smiles and joyous laughter, was put to rest, and Lightning Farron arose from the bed Claire was put to rest in.

Lightning stared at the ceiling of her parents' old bedroom. At the pale pink Serah insisted on repainting the walls. At the wardrobe in the corner of the room that housed a dozen identical uniforms. It was barren, she knew. It felt more like a hotel room than a bedroom. She shook her head at the thought; for so long, she put so much of her time into work and into making money to pay for Serah's schooling. She was nearly through with her first semester, and she wasn't forced to pay a dime. (No, she instead paid for the groceries, and for any maintenance the house required.)

Tomorrow would make Lightning twenty-one years old, and it was a day she was determined to focus on Serah entirely. No work, no business, just Serah and Claire Farron.

Instead, it was to be the first day in a series of living nightmares.


	4. Favorite Scene: Lightning Returns Ending

In a soft blouse and khakis, Claire Farron boarded an empty train. In her hand she held a briefcase carrying a laptop, folders of notes where she tried to make sense of her complicated prior life. It was color coded, sticky-noted, highlighted, even included diagram after diagram of her relationships, friendships, and family.

Claire Farron bought a ticket for this train with no set destination in mind, and she mused to herself as she gazed out the window at the vibrant green of the farmland she passed. Images of Serah passed through her mind - she spoke to her former sister on occasion, saddened but grateful that the younger girl had no recollection of their former lives. Claire thought of Snow and Sazh, both of whom she'd met in passing, who felt Claire was familiar but could not place her in their memories. Hope, Noel, and Yeul had yet to cross her path, but she already assumed that they, like the rest of her old party, only knew this current life.

She supposed it was sad to realize that she, and she alone, remembered the times of Gods and Goddesses, of Fal'Cie and crystal, but ultimately she could not have been happier that no one else was burdened with the nightmares that she was plagued with. Nightmares of Bhunivelze had repeated themselves nearly every week since she was old enough to remember her dreams, but the nightmares of her sole confidant, her best friend, being manipulated and puppeteered as if he were no more than a doll disturbed her almost more than the ones of Bhunivelze himself. She grew up distant even from her own family, though she loved them more than she could express. Loved their normal, boring lives with their normal, boring love. It was more than she could ask for.

The train screeched to a stop, and Claire stood, gathered her belongings, and nodded the conductor goodbye as she exited onto the platform. The smell of fresh grass filled her nostrils and a warm breeze tickled the skin behind her ear where she tucked her hair. In the distance, beyond the rows and rows of brightly colored crops, there stood a loft that beckoned her name.

Gone were her days of scrambling for enough work to provide for not only herself and Serah, but also a home, school, food, and extra curricular activities. Gone were the days of drills, running a mile in under six minutes, hostage scenarios and weaponry training. Gone were the days of a brand burning into her chest, minute by minute, counting down to her impending death. Gone were the days of being a Goddess's champion, of being manipulated and trained into being a goddess herself.

Gone were the days where Claire Farron allowed destiny to be decided for her. Now it was for Claire Farron to choose her own fate.


	5. Emotions: Relief

The first thing to hit my ears is the sound of rustling on grass. Images flash before my eyes: Barthandelus, falling through the pool; Barthandelus, fusing with Orphan; Orphan, no more than a broken clock with a scream etched in its face. Cocoon fell, and Vanille and Fang got separated from us. And then? Nothing. Peace, quiet, until a whisper entered my mind and urged me to wake up.

Gran Pulse met my eyes as Vanille spoke to the others. My limbs felt stiff, tired, and for a few moments I sat on the ground with my legs splayed around me as I tried to regain full control over them. To my left stood Snow, my right Hope, and in front of me Sazh. We all locked eyes before our gaze turned upwards, to what was left of Cocoon. To Fang and Vanille, sleeping inside the crystal pillar that saved the world.

The wind whipped my hair across my face and the sun blinded me, but the grass was soft against my exhausted body, and my mind begged for rest until I saw, in the distance, two silhouettes. It was without any mind to my body's aches and pains that I stood and staggered in their direction.

Snow was over there before I was. He picked her up and spun her around and the two of them fell into a heap of childish laughter on the grass. Sazh was there, too, holding the owner of the second silhouette: a boy, no older than four years old, whose hair was as big as Sazh's. The chocobo chick buried herself in the boy's hair as he laughed, and Sazh cried at the little boy's happy face.

Hope stood next to me, and yet despite the apparent sadness in his face, he turned to look at me with a smile. I wrapped an arm around his shoulder, he wrapped his around my waist, and the two of us lumbered towards the other four of our party.

My sister embraced me with tears streaming down her face. "Lightning," she whispered, resting a hand against my cheek. A smile lit up my features, and I felt a sob bubble up from the back of my throat. Lest I embarrass myself in front of our company, I buried my face inside the crook of her neck as my shoulders wracked with the reality of it all whamming into me.

Serah, my only family, who I spent years pushing away because I only wanted to protect her; Serah, who I should have believed no matter how ridiculous or horrifying the situation; Serah, who left me with tears in her eyes and a brand scorched into her arm, burning more intensely with each passing minute - she was warm, _safe_ , even, in my weary arms. Weeks I spent trying to make up for years of losing her, weeks of all-night patrols and attacking every enemy in sight because I needed to be strong enough to make up for the fact that I could not protect her.

I felt Snow wrap his own arms around both of us, enveloping us in his bear-like presence in a way that, strangely enough, was encouraging and even slightly soothing. Hope rested a hand on my back in a loose embrace - more of a reassurance that "yes, I am here for you, Light, if you ever need someone".

Pulling away, I pawed at my cheeks, trying to erase the tears that puffed my skin up and irritated my eyes. Serah smiled at me, nestling once more inside Snow's chest. I looked at Sazh who held the boy up on his shoulders. "Dajh," he said to the boy, smiling up at him through watery eyes, "meet Light and Hope." He gestured to us respectively, and the little boy waved his chubby hands at us with a grin on his young face.

"Hi, Light and Hope! I'm Dajh Katzroy!" he replied brightly, and Sazh's breath caught in his throat.

I turned to face the crystal pillar, narrowing in on the very center where the crystal was densest. That's where Fang and Vanille were, I knew. Hope reached for my hand and grasped it firmly. Beside us, Snow was laughing about their wedding plans: how soon government would be ready on Pulse, how soon they could get someone together to create the wedding dress Serah dreamed of. Sazh told Dajh all about the wild chocobos, and how soon he would take him to visit their den in the heart of Gran Pulse.

Once again emotion boiled in the back of my throat, and I gripped Hope's hand as if to stave off the brunt of it. This was how things were supposed to be: warm, bright, happy. Hope squeezed my hand back before giving me a kind smile.

"It'll be okay, Light," he told me, and I believed him.


End file.
